Most retail stores keep their inventory and pricing information in a computer to expedite the selling of inventory and restocking process. Until recently, this information was only accessible to the cash registers and store personnel. Given the right interface, customers could interact with the information in the store computer to order items that are sold by the store and that are in stock, and also find out the current price of those items.
Recently, Sears and IBM have teamed up to create software, called "Prodigy", that allows people using a home computer to connect with a database maintained by several types of stores, including grocery stores and airlines, to determine what items are available and at what price. If interested, the users can then place an order with that store and have the item delivered, having the cost of that item charged to their credit cards.
In order to use this method of purchasing merchandise, however, the user must have a personal computer (IBM/PC/XT/AT or compatible or Apple Macintosh computer, for example), a modem, and a copy of the software and accompanying manuals. Using the modem and software, the user may connect to the "Prodigy" computer network which maintains a merchandise and pricing database, through the phone lines coming into the home. The user is provided with a series of menus for determining what items are available for purchase. When the selections are made, the user indicates the desire to order the items, and a delivery schedule is arranged. Non-perishable items are often sent through the mail, while perishable goods such as groceries are only available in areas which have a sponsoring grocery delivery service within range.
Although this approach to ordering and delivering merchandise is effective, it is inaccessible to many because of the expensive initial investment for the computer system and associated hardware. The on-line service also charges a monthly usage fee to offset the cost of providing all of the other services offered by the server. Training is another disadvantage, because people who do not use computers will take a while to understand how computers work, and many people feel computers to be foreboding.
The software used to access "Prodigy" or similar systems is graphically based in order to make it easier to use; but this makes it inherently slow on inexpensive computers, and even expensive computers experience delays resulting from the amount of information that has to be sent over the phone lines. The ordering process, moreover, involves the user deciding upon what is wanted by wading through many computer screens of offerings, though with on-line indices.
Finally, because the merchandise information and pricing information is kept centrally at the server, instead of at the merchant's place of business, there is no real-time pricing or inventory information, and such must be transferred from the computer at regularly scheduled intervals.
Another prior proposal involves dedicated home merchandise ordering terminals for allowing a user to order merchandise remotely, as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,654,482. The device employs a terminal, with a bar code reader, that is connected to the phone lines in the home. Catalogs or other printed materials that contain merchandise information in both human readable and bar code form are used. The bar code wand connected to the merchandise ordering terminal is passed over the bar codes, and the terminal recognizes the bar code and converts it into merchandise information. The merchandise information, including price, is stored in memory in the terminal. The scanned information is kept as a list in memory that will later be transmitted to the remote location (retail merchant) for ordering.
The terminal in this type of system consists of a bar code reader wand, some processing electronics, including a central processing unit (CPU), some memory for temporary storage, some memory to store merchandise recognition information, a modem for communicating with the merchant's computer, a display and some buttons. The CPU monitors the bar code input and translates the bar code signals into merchandise information using data stored in the memory of the terminal. The order is stored in memory until the operator of the terminal places the order by dialing the phone number of the store. Using the modem, the terminal transmits the order information to the computer at the merchant's location. The order is interactive, with the store verifying that each item is in stock and displaying the current price of the item through the terminal. Using the buttons on the terminal, the operator indicates his or her willingness to pay the price indicated, by pressing either the "yes" or "no" button. Other information can be sent to the terminal from the merchant for display to the user.
While using the bar code to input the order data is a good way to save time and reduce errors, there are, however, difficulties with such a scheme, residing primarily in the prohibitively expensive home unit, which limits the number of people that would be able to participate, including the disabled and the elderly, and the high degree of complexity in the interface of such a device.
The present invention, on the other hand, provides a low-cost ordering terminal of different philosophy and construction that overcomes many of these problems associated with the aforementioned devices. While a bar code wand is most useful for reducing errors associated with inputting data to an ordering terminal, the information connected to the bar code reader is not very useful if it is out of date. In accordance with the invention, when a bar code reader is employed, as preferred, such is directly connected with the database containing up-to-date inventory and price information. The use of modems, moreover, is completely obviated by connecting the bar code wand preferably to a Dual Tone Multiple Frequency (DTMF) generator, such that the printed bar codes are translated into corresponding DTMF tones representing the item data-to-be ordered as contained in the bar code, and transmitted over the telephone to the remote location. Any receiving device that can recognize such tones can provide database access to the bar code user.
While, as before stated, bar code reading has been used in other systems including, also, U.S. Pat. No. 4,782,513 involving a voice-prompted bar code reading satellite system, the present invention contemplates in a best mode embodiment, a home device containing the bar code reader wand connected directly to bar code decoding electronics and to a DTMF generator, all simply hooked to the user phone to allow ordering data to be inputted using the bar code wand and the printed bar codes.
This direct conversion of the ordered item alphanumeric information contained in the wand-read bar code into corresponding DTMF tones representing the very same information, and the transmission of this information in DTMF tone form to the remote location is thus not to be confused with mere DTMF dialing, such as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,975,948, or data transmission use in other applications, such as the use of DTMF tone protocol data transmission to a computer as, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,799,254. While, moreover, standard DTMF tones are preferred, other analog tones may also be employed if desired, and such are intended to be generically included in the present specification and claims by the term "DTMF".
The device at the receiving end (merchant's database) decodes the DTMF tones representing the ordered items, with the receiver communicating back with the user of the bar code wand by voice signals (digital, analog, synthesized, or otherwise) of confirmatory, error-eliminating ordered item information, pricing, etc., as later more fully explained. The bar code decoding unit and the receiver unit constitute a pair of devices that allows the user at a remote location to access a distant database; and using printed bar codes, the user may thus input or retrieve information from the database. This is to be contrasted, again, with prior art concepts of mere oral response to touch-tone telephone queries as, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,129.
Other prior proposals for remote merchandise ordering include those of U.S. Pat. No. 4,797,913 for an ordering system that permits calling customers to place originating calls and orders with an ordering service office located within a Local Access and Transport Area (LATA) for subsequent routing to the appropriate ordering service vendor; U.S. Pat. No. 4,734,858 for a data terminal and system for placing orders that contemplates the orders being routed by the local processing center to local merchants or to a regional processing center; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,654,482 utilizing a terminal to store ordering information and to order goods or merchandise from any one of several merchants from the home and over the direct distance dial telephone network. Such alternative schemes, however, provide inadequate user-friendliness, high start-up cost and complexity of user learning, and lack simple error-free transmission of order requests among other deficiencies.
The present invention provides a user, thus, with direct contact with the vendor's product database in real time via the telephone network. Since this contact is direct, it is not necessary to be routed by an intermediate service to the vendor. Further, all processing and storing of information is accomplished at the vendor's site rather than at the user's site.